Photos by me, with a bit of chat.

Forest Otter

Christmas came early this morning, a lovely sunrise and another Otter.

I was up early and on site just as it was getting light… this was a shot taken with full ISO and thus very grainy… The most likely time to see an otter is just as it is getting light or just as it is getting dark, which is the worst time for the camera.

By the way no Otter in the photo above it is just there to show what sort of picture you get immediately after sunrise.

I was scanning the far sides of the lake with my binoculars when suddenly there was a loud splash in the weedy water not 10 meters away from me. My first thoughts was maybe a large fish had surfaced. Then the Otter popped up right in front of me and now about 50 meters out. I desperately tried to focus but with my insulated gloves on it was all a bit of a fumble.

It dived and then reappeared further out, now I had yanked my gloves off and was better able to focus. Again it only had a quick look round and then disappeared off to the left behind some reed beds. I waited a short while but no more views so I slowly walked back along the bank and then I saw it again, now right across the lake and it moved across and then out of view.

I remained by the lake for about an hour, the sunrise produced some nice colours on the trees and reed beds but with only a telephoto lens I was limited in what I could snap away at.

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A young Swan came up close, maybe expecting me to feed it and when that did not happen it gave me a good loud hiss and then swam off. Also at the lake were a few Grey-lag Geese, two pairs of Mallards some Coots and that was about it.

Next challenge is to get a shot of an Otter out of the water.. maybe sat on a rock in the middle of the river Wye eating a salmon….. now that really would be Christmas come early.